A Literary Magazine

Issue Ten – October 2006

By The Editors

We all take journeys, whether we want to or not, whether we are prepared or not. Our entire life is a journey, starting with that first cry which we learn gets us attention to the last soft murmur as death carries us over. What happens in between is up to us, and it is what matters.

By Steve Horn

In 2005, with the generous support of the Island community, I completed a book of photographs and essays, Pictures Without Borders: Bosnia Revisited, which narrates the story of my return trip to the Balkans after thirty years in search of places and people from the past.

By Mike Conner

I was nineteen years old, returning from a winter in the jungles of Southern Belize, dramatically changed by a foreign climate and culture. On contract as a student of The Evergreen State College of Olympia, Washington, I’d been immersed in studying rainforest natural history and the lives and subsistence strategies of the Kekchi Maya.

By Alie Wiegersma Smaalders

Genevieve Heller was on her knees, weeding. The soil, black and soft after the recent rains, let go of the weeds readily. Her fingers tightened around the base of a blooming filaree. Such pretty rose-lavender flowers. Sorry, filaree, out you go.

She swept her hair away from her face with the back of her hand. Her knees hurt. Every time she moved along the border, her knees hurt more.

By Helen Sanders

Belador dragged her up the stairs, saying good night with such quickness to his mother that Etaine regarded them with some sadness in her eyes. “We have a great deal of work to see to in the morning. Rest well.” Belador pulled Sauvir up the stairs with the concentration of a questing hound and too tired to resist, she let her curiosity have its way with her.

By Molly Swan-Sheeran

By John Sangster

Two crows steal apples from the orchard, black-eyed thieves shuttling their cargo (only what’s ripe) into the woods. Do I pick now or wait until the crop’s ready, risking a full-scale heist? Not just crows, either: coons, woodpeckers . . .

By John Sangster

Quiet on the deck this morning. Dry July, no dew on the table, the Straits glassy flat where local breezes brushstroke the surface a darker blue. Beyond, the Olympics hunker on the horizon, their peaks touched with white. A dog barks in the distance.

By Ande Finley

By Ande Finley

The palms on Ocean Avenue poke
the sky, swishing their clatter
against fat clouds, against pale stucco,
bleached out by salty neglect,
against the edge of this sleepy beach town
that no longer remembers itself.